Conventionally, network traffic management systems attempt to avoid congestion by applying traffic management to the types of network traffic that are mostly likely to cause congestion. For example, by limiting bandwidth available to users of predetermined types of traffic such as peer-to-peer (P2P) or the like. In other cases, traffic management may manage traffic only during peak hours by limiting bandwidth per user during these peak times. These types of solutions can, in some cases, actually lower the Quality of Experience (QoE) by affecting subscribers even in the absence of actual congestion, restricting them from using bandwidth that would otherwise be available to them. Further, these conventional solutions may not actually solve the underlying traffic management problem because the sum of the enforcement policies may still be less than what is required to relieve congestion. For example, there may be few or no heavy users or a low amount or no low priority traffic, such as P2P or bulk downloads, but the network may still suffer from congestion.
It is, therefore, desirable to provide novel and improved traffic management systems and methods.